Photograph

December 12, 2007

By Carla L., Hilliard, OH

There is a box of pictures on the closet floor Candid expressions that make me laugh People standing not perfectly still Blurred faces caught by surprise, Too late to duck out of site: These pictures are the most honest kind

I can capture the world by its tail in a picture A photograph, a fixed memory It exposes the secrets and mysteries of a civilization’s past Or it just fills a plastic frame Everything in the box is a piece to the puzzle So that, when I can’t recollect my past, I will find it there The picnics, Christmas portraits The old street and the crabapple tree I would’ve sworn that the attic was haunted, And the too young faces of my old best friends

The time between the photographs Is something fun to compare: Look at me at six, at twelve Always dressed for ballet in a black leotard As if I had never left The cat that would hide in the white cotton curtains My bright eyes catching the six-o-clock sun Proof I am my father’s daughter—

His eyes the same blue-green, Like they were built from seawater— I love every embarrassing picture Every old Polaroid with its labeled frame And I think of how we’d take them, Hold and shake them, until the blacks of the centers came to life Forming the shapes that were our friends and our world Photographs are stories where words don’t do justice The box is my prized keepsake More live in scrapbooks or on mantels, In the coffin tables and under beds And yours? You must keep your stories Never throw an old picture away

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